Western Digital climbs after Morgan Stanley boosts PT

Western Digital's WDC.O shares up 3.5% at $59.44 on Tues after Morgan Stanley reiterates 'overweight' rating following investor meetings with data storage provider

Brokerage boosts PT by $8 to $78, implying 36% upside to stock's last close

Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring says he's more bullish on WDC's long-term model and narrowing of relative valuation gap vs peers

Woodring says he has more confidence in several critical aspects of WDC's story, citing conservatism in management's long-term financial model; competitive positioning within hard disk drives, pacing and timing of de-levering and capital returns, and CEO Irving Tan as a "key change-agent"

On NTM earnings basis, WDC shares trading at ~20% discount vs Seagate Technology STX.O on average, which Woodring believes is unwarranted

According to LSEG data, WDC shares recently traded at about 10.6x forward earnings compared to STX at about 14x

STX shares down 0.3% on the session

Earlier this month, WDC neared exiting its Sandisk SNDK.O stake in secondary offering. In May, WDC unveiled $2 bln stock buyback program

Of 26 analysts covering WDC., recommendation breakdown is 22 "strong buy" or "buy" and 4 "hold" and median PT is $60, per LSEG

With move on Tues, stock up 32% YTD vs ~26% gain in NYSE Arca Disk Drive index .DDX and 2.5% rise in S&P 500 Tech sector .SPLRCT